A former assistant chief of the St. Augustine Police Department pleaded no contest on Oct. 28 to one count of third-degree grand theft, the St. Johns Citizen reported Sunday. A circuit judge accepted the plea, ordered a presentence investigation, and deferred sentencing until Dec. 23, according to the Citizen’s account of the court record. The case concerns money taken from a benevolent fund whose finances the former officer had managed as its treasurer since 2003, according to that same account.

The Tattler is not printing the name, under the standing rule that crime coverage in this paper names no private individual. The conduct alleged here was as treasurer of a private nonprofit rather than as a police official, which is why the public-figure exception does not reach it. The office the person held and the organization the money came from are both described here as the record describes them.

The organization is the St. Augustine Police Benevolent Organization, which the police department describes as a private nonprofit funded by officers themselves. It assists department members and their families in times of need, according to that description, and it receives no taxpayer money. Investigators allege that checks totaling $22,722 were written from the charity’s account to the treasurer, according to the Citizen’s report. They also flagged $17,632 in cash deposits to a personal account that they suspect came from the organization, the same report says. According to the arrest affidavit as the Citizen quotes it, the person described the money in a January interview as loans to self, with a stated intention of full repayment.

The discrepancies surfaced during a review conducted after the treasurer retired from the department in November 2025, the Citizen reported. The person joined the department in 1997 and rose to assistant chief over a career of more than two decades, according to the same account. Court records reviewed by that outlet do not show the terms of any plea agreement and do not indicate whether restitution has been paid. The defense attorney did not respond to an email from the Citizen seeking comment before that outlet published its report.

This paper could not read the court file itself, and the sourcing above is therefore the Citizen’s reporting, attributed throughout under the fair report posture. The circuit court’s public case search is gated behind a CAPTCHA that this newsroom cannot pass, which has been true since this paper first measured it in September. The State Attorney’s announcement feed, which this paper reads every cycle and read again Sunday night, carries no entry for this case among its twenty newest items. A presentence investigation is a background report prepared by probation officers for the sentencing judge, in the Citizen’s description of the order. The sentence that follows it will be the next public event in the case, and the court has set it for Dec. 23.

The Tattler has entered the case in its disposition watch, which is checked against the available records every cycle. The sentence will be published at the same prominence as this story when it is imposed, which is the promise this section carries.

A criminal charge is an accusation. All defendants are presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. The Tattler tracks the cases it reports and publishes the outcome, including when charges are dropped or reduced. If you are named in this story and the case has resolved, write to corrections@stjohnstattler.org and we will update it.